What do you think?
Rate this book
Castaway
In her debut collection of poetry, Katherine Riegel explores the secrets that lurk in the wide-open spaces of the Midwest, images of prairie as ocean never far from the surface-as James Wright wrote, "Where is the sea, that once solved the whole loneliness/Of the Midwest?" Here are fairytale doors that lead to horses and clover, sensuality and regret. Here, among the drifting leaves, are sketches of a family as ecosystem, complex and competing. In these poems, songbirds sing of loss and remembrance. Castaway is an homage to a childhood, a family, a place. It is a book about memory and mourning, yearning, and just how far words can take us in the effort to reclaim what we've lost.
- GenresPoetry
94 pages, Paperback
First published September 26, 2010
249 people want to read
About the author
Katherine Riegel
11 books24 followersKatherine--Katie--Riegel is a poet, writer, editor, educator, meditator, and animal lover. She's the author of a lyric memoir, three full-length books of poetry, a chapbook, and other books. In late July 2025, she's permanently moving to a small village not far from Edinburgh, Scotland. She teaches independent online classes in poetry and creative nonfiction--more info on her website.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
March 15, 2018
We are the publisher, so all of our authors get five stars from us. Excerpts:
GREETING
Drive down a lightly graveled road
between a field of corn and a field of soybeans.
Turn off the engine. Open
the windows. This is very important.
How else can you
smell the purple clover?
Your life is a tree
in all this open space.
And the birds—
sparrows and red-winged blackbirds, robins,
mourning doves, swallows—
they do not need your life.
This is a good
thing. You are lonely enough
for yourself to bear.
It is June.
Stay until the corn
is so tall a child could
walk into it and disappear.
It will not seem like
a long wait.
Look at the sky, the silver shapes
going about their own
stately business.
When you
walk out of the whispering corn
you will get into the car,
sit in front of the steering wheel.
You will wonder how you got
old enough to drive, big
enough to reach the pedals.
Smile in greeting. Tell yourself to
smell the clover, watch the birds.
Tell yourself welcome.
Tell yourself
all the stories you know.
MY FATHER IN ILLINOIS
His hands are effete, worried,
vaguely incompetent,
but he is building the inside of a barn
for horses, spacious stalls
with double-hung doors so balanced
a child will open and close them easily
all her life
until she is ten and has to leave.
For him, this place is a desert island
on which he is marooned. Around him the flat,
becalmed fields, too open to the sky.
No hills, no trees, no cold, sweet streams.
He must work, or die.
I want to know
how he could not love
this farm, this barn
with its good strong wood
that he precisely cut and nailed,
the beams and rafters becoming
the frame of the ship I sail in dreams
ever after.
He lets the tape measure swallow itself
and looks down the dim aisle
towards the future me.
“It’s not Pennsylvania,” he says,
and both of us, forever castaways,
turn to our separate endeavors.
GREETING
Drive down a lightly graveled road
between a field of corn and a field of soybeans.
Turn off the engine. Open
the windows. This is very important.
How else can you
smell the purple clover?
Your life is a tree
in all this open space.
And the birds—
sparrows and red-winged blackbirds, robins,
mourning doves, swallows—
they do not need your life.
This is a good
thing. You are lonely enough
for yourself to bear.
It is June.
Stay until the corn
is so tall a child could
walk into it and disappear.
It will not seem like
a long wait.
Look at the sky, the silver shapes
going about their own
stately business.
When you
walk out of the whispering corn
you will get into the car,
sit in front of the steering wheel.
You will wonder how you got
old enough to drive, big
enough to reach the pedals.
Smile in greeting. Tell yourself to
smell the clover, watch the birds.
Tell yourself welcome.
Tell yourself
all the stories you know.
MY FATHER IN ILLINOIS
His hands are effete, worried,
vaguely incompetent,
but he is building the inside of a barn
for horses, spacious stalls
with double-hung doors so balanced
a child will open and close them easily
all her life
until she is ten and has to leave.
For him, this place is a desert island
on which he is marooned. Around him the flat,
becalmed fields, too open to the sky.
No hills, no trees, no cold, sweet streams.
He must work, or die.
I want to know
how he could not love
this farm, this barn
with its good strong wood
that he precisely cut and nailed,
the beams and rafters becoming
the frame of the ship I sail in dreams
ever after.
He lets the tape measure swallow itself
and looks down the dim aisle
towards the future me.
“It’s not Pennsylvania,” he says,
and both of us, forever castaways,
turn to our separate endeavors.
April 15, 2013
Castaway is memories of growing up, childhood in the landscapes of Illinois. Riegel's work is excellence at its best.
Ambrosia
They say we have finished becoming by age seven. We are the tree in the front yard by then - drag queen spectacle at christmas pale fingered in the spring, dark green secrets in the summer - but never any different bark, leaves of another species, arms the shape of castle spires.
How to Follow the Rules
Sleep through mornings that show you one dull path, the one you think you've made for yourself and can't remake, the one you plod down like an old horse with blinders on who can smell the wide world out there but doesn't remember the jittery foal inside, the filly damn-fool-stupid who raced across tender spring grass just for the sake of the wind.
MY FAVORITES:
★Childhood: A Portrait
★In Illinois, everything Breathes
★Art ★Naga
★Green Velvet
★Die Fiedermaus
★Geography
★Insomniac in the Afternoon
★Virid
Ambrosia
They say we have finished becoming by age seven. We are the tree in the front yard by then - drag queen spectacle at christmas pale fingered in the spring, dark green secrets in the summer - but never any different bark, leaves of another species, arms the shape of castle spires.
How to Follow the Rules
Sleep through mornings that show you one dull path, the one you think you've made for yourself and can't remake, the one you plod down like an old horse with blinders on who can smell the wide world out there but doesn't remember the jittery foal inside, the filly damn-fool-stupid who raced across tender spring grass just for the sake of the wind.
MY FAVORITES:
★Childhood: A Portrait
★In Illinois, everything Breathes
★Art ★Naga
★Green Velvet
★Die Fiedermaus
★Geography
★Insomniac in the Afternoon
★Virid
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews